Subaru owner here (turbocharged 2.5L flat-4 in a WRX). I really doubt if most people who aren’t “car people” (ie, people who buy a car to get from point A to point B) would ever really notice that the car sounds different…and if they did notice, they probably wouldn’t care.
The boxer sound is pretty obvious with a louder aftermarket exhaust, but with the stock setup on my car, you pretty much had to be standing behind the car when it was running to really hear the difference (the turbo does tend to quiet the exhaust, but my in-laws’ non-turbo Impreza isn’t much different).
As far as feel goes, to me the only real difference in feel from most other cars is the feeling of boost, although that’s definitely not boxer-specific. What’s the difference in feel to you?
I don’t get what you mean, Melchior. For each single revolution of an engine, the crankshaft will turn 360 degrees. The piston on a single cylinder engine will, if starting at TDC, go all the way down and then up. Each additional cylinder’s piston will do the same, although some will be starting at a different places in their cylinders. Given the same stroke, each of the pistons in a V-12 will be moving the same speed as those in a four cylinder engine at the same engine RPM.
This was true once upon a time…but now, things aren’t so black and white. You can get pretty darn good fuel mileage in a high-performance V8 like the Corvette’s, and you can get pretty darn good performance out of turbocharged four- and six-cylinder engines. The Vette gets better highway fuel mileage than my turbo 4-cylinder, and my car is faster than a lot of V6 and V8 cars out there.
The V6s in the Camaro, Mustang, and even some Hyundais make over 300 horsepower…and then there’s the Nissan GT-R, which sports a 3.8L V6 that makes 500+ horsepower.
I believe he is referring to the fact that under load, the additional cylinders will generate more torque therefore accelerate more quickly for a given load.
Lower torque engines like my old VW rabbit diesel you can floor the gas pedal and still just slowly watch the RPM creep up in higher gears. My 74 Formula 400 Firebird had no such problem, (and about 1/4 the gas mileage <sob>)
I made a mistake- I meant that power & fuel consumption would be somewhat higher, not fuel economy.
Another consideration might be balancing, as in 4 cylinder cars tend to be harder to balance than 6 cylinder ones, esp. straight-6. I think all the pertinent engineering has been done though, and there’s not much difference in the in-the-seat feel between them though.
The last couple of generations of Subaru boxers also haven’t felt especially boxer-y. Normally boxers tend to be fairly high-revving engines because they need to have a shorter stroke to keep the external dimensions of the engine manageable, but recent (as in the last decade and a half or so) Subarus have had decent low-end power and pretty much drive like a normal inline four. Of course, if you’re talking about a new one (and don’t go for a 3-pedal) they’re mostly CVT’s, so who cares where the engine makes power?
That makes sense. I’m a three-pedal (and turbo) guy all the way, but I’ve driven a CVT Impreza and was fairly impressed. I’ve owned a lot of cars that really need to be revved up to make power, so I probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway.
A note about the Subaru’s boxer engines and why they may feel different (though i have not noticed it), 2 cylinders fire at the same time always. So in some respects it is a 2 cylinder engine (or 3 for their 6). Other 4’s (6’s and 8’s) fire individually.
That’s not right. How would that have worked back when they had distributors?
The thing that’s weird with them, firing order wise, is that because the two opposed pistons have to be at TDC at the same time, this necessarily means that the cylinders in each bank have to be next to each other in the firing order (so imagine LLRR). On most V-type engines, the firing order switches from side to side (LRLRLR). That’s what leads to the unique exhaust noise from a boxer-- on a V-type engine you’ve got more or less steady flow through each of the exhaust manifolds/headers, but on a boxer one side flows for 360 degrees and then the other side flows for the other 360, resulting in pulses in the exhaust note.
That has absolutely nothing to do with the number of cylinders, though. That article is just using “V6” and “V8” as examples of a less powerful and less powerful engine. By putting a bigger bore or a longer stroke, you can make a 4 cylinder that has the same displacement as a V6 and those two engines will be for the most part functionally identical. Looking at the number of cylinders alone tells you very little about an engine.
I think that car mfrs aim for an optimum size of piston and all that, perhaps also to standardize production. Reliability may be better at a certain size. So, it does boil down to number of pistons after all.
I guess it’s not surprising. I drove cars where the 6 was intended to provide better fuel economy and lower cost than the 8s that those truck and big cars needed. Also, I forgot about the Toyota Supra. It’s 6 cylinder turbo charged engine was economical and powerful, and in a cool looking car too.
The point is that if you’re shopping for a car, a specific engine configuration with a specific number of cylinders shouldn’t be one of your criteria in and of itself. Especially at this particular point in automotive history where many of the car makers are in the process of dropping the V6’s as their “premium” engines in favor of turbocharged, direct injected and otherwise pepped up four cylinders. Most of the V6’s still getting put in small to midside cars and small SUV’s at this point are older designs. It would be a big mistake to insist on one of those instead of one of the newer four cylinder designs because you’re counting cylinders instead of actually comparing performance.
Asking 4 cylinder versus 6 cylinder is too high level a question. I would take VW’s Turbo 4 cylinder over their 6 cylinder offering. But I might choose a Ford V-6 over their 4. There are so many variables amongst manufacturers, designs, etc., that asking generally 4 cyl vs 6 cylinder is like asking should I marry a blond or a brunette.
I bought a new Jeep Cherokee in 1999, with a 4.0 l straight-six engine. A few months later, a coworker bought a new Jeep Wrangler. He bought one with a four-cylinder engine because he wanted better gas mileage. It didn’t work. My ‘six’ got better mileage than his ‘four’. Despite heavy traffic on the 405 and a 55 mph speed limit in the L.A./Orange County area, freeway speeds are often more than 70 mph. At 70+ mph, my coworker was flogging his engine. Meanwhile, my engine was just loafing along.
(FWIW, if I kept my speed to 55 to 60 mph on my commutes, I could get 25 mpg in the Cherokee. Nowadays, where the speed limit is 70, and driving that fast, I can get about 19 mpg. The SO has a lead foot and enjoys stomping on the pedal because the Jeep leaps forward compared to her 4-cyl. Tacoma. She gets about 16 or 17 mpg in the Jeep.)